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    Weekend at Thrackley
    Weekend at Thrackley
    Weekend at Thrackley
    Ebook251 pages4 hours

    Weekend at Thrackley

    By Alan Melville and Martin Edwards

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Mystery crime fiction written in the Golden Age of Murder

    "Bubbly social satire sets off a clockwork plot." —Booklist STARRED review

    'I'm taking a revolver to Thrackley. You never know with blokes like Carson. I hate these harmless, potty people—they're always up to something.'

    Jim Henderson is one of six guests summoned by the mysterious Edwin Carson, a collector of precious stones, to a weekend party at his country house, Thrackley. The house is gloomy and forbidding but the party is warm and hospitable—except for the presence of Jacobson, the sinister butler. The other guests are wealthy people draped in jewels; Jim cannot imagine why he belongs in such company.

    After a weekend of adventure—with attempted robbery and a vanishing guest—secrets come to light and Jim unravels a mystery from his past.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSourcebooks
    Release dateAug 7, 2018
    ISBN9781464209727
    Author

    Alan Melville

    ALAN MELVILLE (1910–1983) was a well-known television broadcaster, as well as a playwright, producer, and scriptwriter. Among his works are several crime novels from the 1930s, often set in the popular entertainment world he knew firsthand. Quick Curtain and Death of Anton were reissued as British Library Crime Classics in 2015.

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    Reviews for Weekend at Thrackley

    3.5/5

    37 ratings8 reviews

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    • 4/5
      The introduction to this Poison Pen Press edition of "Weekend at Thrackley" tells us that this is the first novel published in 1934 by Alan Melville, who later went on to have a good career as a scriptwriter, although he also published children's books and other novels. It sold well initially and for some years after and was even made into a film.As a first novel, "Weekend at Thrackley" isn't the best golden age mystery you will ever read, but it isn't all that bad. Mr. Melville is clearly imitating some contemporary writers and he has some odd ideas about electricity. It's enjoyable if a bit contrived.If you are a fan of golden age mysteries then give it a try.I received a review copy of "Weekend at Thrackley" by Alan Melville (Poisoned Pen Press – British Library Crime Classics) through NetGalley.com. Originally published in 1934 by Skeffington & Son, Ltd. and reissued several times.
    • 2/5
      This novel was sent to me by the publisher Poisoned Pen Press via NetGalley. Thank you.Melville sets his sight on the country house mystery in this novel. A group of people, all but one owning priceless jewels, is invited to the isolated manor house of a noted jewelry collector. The owner Edwin Carson specifically asks them to bring their gems with them so that he can admire them (and maybe offer to purchase them???) The odd man out is Jim Henderson, invited because Carson was a friend of Jim’s father. The estate inhabitants include a mysterious butler, a suspicious chauffeur and Carson’s beautiful daughter Mary. I really enjoyed Melville two previously reissued mysteries by Poisoned Pen Press, Death of Anton with its circus setting and Quick Curtain, a very funny burlesque of the theatre. This mystery fell flat for me. The humor felt forced, especially the portrayal of Jim’s friend Freddie Usher who was just too Bertie Woosterish for my taste. And there seemed to be a touch of mean-spiritedness in the descriptions of the characters. Why was it necessary to describe Lady Stone’s fat and flabby thighs when she is found in pitiful situation? The reader disliked her already for her overbearing, condescending personality. And the murder of a Scotland Yard detective intruded in what was a tongue in cheek plot.Melville is an enjoyable writer but I found Weekend at Thrackley less satisfying than his two previous novels.
    • 5/5
      Reprint, cosy-mystery, British, amateur-sleuth, historical-fiction, sly-humor I love these reprints almost as much as the Charlie Chan and Thin Man series! Well written and twisty, complete with a few red herrings, the mystery holds attention. The characters are so clearly presented and the scene so intricately described that I felt like I was there! I guarantee that I will keep sniffing around so that I can read all that the Poisoned Pen Press puts out in the British Library Crime Classics. I requested and received a free review copy via NetGalley. Thank you!
    • 3/5
      Edwin Carson invites several persons to spend the weekend at his country house in Surrey. Captain Jim Henderson is among those invited. He does not know why he is on the guest list but decides to go for the adventure and food if nothing else. Adventure they get. Jim discovers a microphone hidden in the chimney in his room and in his friend's room as well. The rest of the novel concerns stolen jewels and even includes murder. The question is not so much whodunit as "will the victims escape the country house." I imagine the puzzle was quite good in its day, but it is unlikely to resound with modern readers as much. I received an electronic galley from the publisher (Poisoned Pen Press) via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
    • 4/5
      Thanks to Poisoned Pen Press and Netgalley for providing me with an advance eBook of this book. The views expressed are my own.This is a suspenseful country-house mystery story. It's got an interesting plot that will easily keep your attention to the dramatic few chapters when the villain is dealt with. The house called Thrackley is as much as a character as any of the humans. From its introduction, Thrackley is portrayed as a sinister evil entity and plays a huge role in creating the suspense which makes this book an entertaining read.The scene in Chapter 17 when Lady Stone, one of the week-end guests, attempts to thwart an elaborate burglar alarm system is a funny break from the suspense. It is not to be missed.The Introduction by Martin Edwards is, as usual, a great scene-setter.Recommended
    • 3/5
      I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.Jim Henderson is surprised to receive an invitation to a weekend house party from Edwin Carson, a man claiming to have known his father. He travels down with a friend of his and encounters Edwin's attractive daughter.This was more of an adventure than a mystery, complete with secret cellars and mysterious wiring and alarms etc. Jim was a likeable hero and the tone throughout was light and humorous. I have to confess to getting a little bored half way through and speed reading the second half. I was also confused by certain things: if Jim left school to take part in the war and has been unemployed in the three years since the end of the war, how can he be 34? I thought all the staff met up with Carson in the cellar on the first evening, but then Burroughs claimed never to have been there before. Finally Mary's behaviour seemed a little inconsistent - why did she prevent Jim from intervening when he was some one entering Lady Stone's room?Entertaining but superficial. The light tone didn't really gel with Burrough's fate either.
    • 4/5
      This house party mystery was written in 1934. Jim Henderson finds himself one of six guests invited to Thrackley, Surrey by a Edwin Carson who says that he was a friend of Jim's father. With the other guests being relatively wealthly compared to him Jim has no idea was he is really there. But all will be revealed by the end of the weekend.
      An enjoyable mystery though more of an adventure story than a murder mystery.
    • 3/5
      Six people,five of them lucky proprietors of some fabulous jewellery, and one out of job,out of luck outsider are invited for a weekend at a remote and rather gloomy country house by a mysterious, wealthy collector of jewels and precious stones. They are an Ill-assorted lot waited on by a very lugubrious butler. And then things start to happen,of course...one of the servants is not who he seems to be,a guest disappears,there is a very interesting and well appointed cellar...This is not so much a" who done it" but more of a "how is it going to end".
      But notwithstanding the great setting(an isolated country house always works for me) it did not impress me all that much. It feels like a not so successful imprint of P.G.Wodehouse. One expects to hear tally-ho any moment. No,not entirely my cup of tea...

    Book preview

    Weekend at Thrackley - Alan Melville

    Us

    Introduction

    Weekend at Thrackley is a country house mystery in the classic tradition. Jim Henderson is a likeable young man typical of his time. Having left school to fight in the war, he has returned with each limb intact but with neither business training nor experience. As the story begins, he’s spent three years out of work before unexpectedly receiving an invitation to a country house party in Surrey.

    The summons to Thrackley is slightly mysterious. Edwin Carson, who owns the old house, says he recently returned to England from abroad, and claims to have been a very close friend of Jim’s father. In fact, Jim hasn’t heard of him, but the prospect of a free weekend with free food and free drink proves irresistible, and he accepts.

    Inevitably, this being a Golden Age mystery novel, Jim finds himself in the midst of a curiously assorted group of individuals, presided over by Carson and his sinister sidekick Jacobson. And it soon becomes clear that Carson’s motives for assembling his guests are not purely social.

    First published in 1934, Weekend at Thrackley was a debut novel, and—although the plot is very different—its style was clearly influenced by A.A. Milne’s The Red House Mystery, which achieved enormous popularity after it appeared in 1922. Raymond Chandler, no less, described Milne’s novel as "an agreeable book, light, amusing in the Punch style, written with a deceptive smoothness that is not as easy as it looks." Melville was aiming for something similar. He admired Milne’s light touch as a writer, and says in his autobiography, Merely Melville (1970) that the only distinction of any kind that he achieved during his schooldays was winning a prize for English literature on the strength of a parody of Milne’s works.

    William Melville Caverhile (1910–83), who became much better known as Alan Melville, was born in Berwick-upon-Tweed. After leaving school, he started working for the family timber firm in Berwick. Hopelessly unsuited for business life, he showed stirrings of independence by deciding to move out of the family home and live in a local hotel, presided over by an energetic saint called Miss Nellie Robinson, who may just have inspired his affectionate portrayal of Jim Henderson’s landlady, Mrs Bertram, in this novel.

    Melville yearned to go on the stage, but recognized that as it seemed unlikely that I would ever go direct from a back room in the Waterloo Hotel, Berwick-upon-Tweed, to stardom in the West End, there was a possible side-entrance through writing… the thing was obviously money for old rope. He started to pound away on an old typewriter, working long into the night, much to the despair of commercial travellers in adjoining rooms who were trying to get some sleep. His earliest efforts, short stories for children, were accepted by the BBC, and Melville broadcast them himself. He followed up this initial success with a flurry of poems, stories, and news items for the Press, while continuing to work at the timber yard.

    The part-time author’s next venture was to write a whodunnit, and the result was Weekend at Thrackley. According to his light-hearted recollection, half a lifetime later, in Merely Melville, "it wasn’t very good… but to my amazement it was accepted first time out by a subsidiary of Hutchinson, sold rather well, went into paperback, and was subsequently made into a film called, for no reason that I could fathom, Hot Ice. The film was quite terrible and bore no relation at all to the original masterpiece." This is not quite the full story, since the publisher, Skeffington, was a small independent firm, and Melville also wrote a play based on the book, which was then adapted for film. The movie, starring John Justin and Barbara Murray, was released in 1952, so in one guise or another, Weekend at Thrackley enjoyed a long life, although the original novel has been out of print for many years.

    Melville was modest about his crime writing, but Weekend at Thrackley changed his life: I had earned much more during the three months it had taken me to write the whodunit in my spare time than I could have earned in three years at my present emolument in the timber business. When his uncle proved reluctant to raise his pay, he resigned to become a freelance writer and performer. With the money from the sale of the film rights, he bought a bungalow, and called it Thrackley.

    He rapidly wrote five more crime novels, including Death of Anton and Quick Curtain, both of which have been given fresh life in the British Library’s Crime Classics series. But there were no more sales of film rights, and like many novelists before and since, he found that repeating an initial literary success, and earning a good long-term living from writing fiction, was at least as difficult as making the initial breakthrough. In 1936, he took a job as a scriptwriter in the Variety Department of the BBC, under Eric Maschwitz, who had himself dabbled with success in the crime genre, collaborating with Val Gielgud on several mysteries, the most successful of which was Death at Broadcasting House, published at around the same time as this book.

    Like many people who tried their hand at crime writing during the Golden Age of Murder between the world wars, Melville had other priorities. For all his gifts in the field of light entertainment, he did not have the commitment to the genre necessary for a lengthy run as a published crime writer. But it didn’t matter. After the Second World War, in addition to writing lyrics, plays and revues, he became a popular television personality. By then, Weekend at Thrackley was long forgotten. Its republication gives modern readers the chance to sample the first full-length novel by a young man who would, in later years, become a household name.

    —Martin Edwards

    www.martinedwardsbooks.com

    I

    The alarm clock at Mr. Henderson’s left ear gave a slight warning twitch and then went off with all its customary punctuality and power. It had not cost a great deal of money (to be exact, three shillings and elevenpence), but for all that it had a good bullying ring which could be calculated to waken most of Mrs. Bertram’s lodgers. Not, however, Mr. Henderson. In the flat below, Mrs. Twist heard the sound of the alarm and dispatched her several offsprings to their several schools. Even nearer the bowels of the earth, in the very bottom flat, Mr. Jackson started at the sound, bolted his second egg and his third cup of tea, snatched his umbrella and bowler hat from their places on the hallstand, kissed a good-bye to his wife, and departed at a steady trot in the direction of the 8.25 to town. But the alarm had very little effect on the person nearest to it. It rang uninterrupted for nearly a minute, and then a hand appeared slowly from beneath the bedclothes, stretched itself out in the direction of the clock, waggled for a second or two until it found the alarm-pointer, and disappeared again beneath the sheets. A strange stillness settled once more on Number 34, Ardgowan Mansions, N. And Jim Henderson turned over on his other side and went to sleep.

    His landlady, Mrs. Bertram, knew her business. Jim had given her strict orders on the early-morning procedure. At eight-fifteen, alarms but no excursions. At nine, breakfast. In the sitting-room if the sensational happened and Jim rallied to the alarm’s ringing. In bed if he didn’t. During his three years’ stay at Mrs. Bertram’s establishment (which was the official description given to the place whenever Mrs. Bertram put a two-line advertisement in the evening papers), Jim had had breakfast thrice in the sitting-room. Once out of sheer necessity in order to catch a train. Twice when the three-and-elevenpenny alarm clock had made unfortunate blots on its otherwise excellent record. On all other mornings, breakfast was brought to him in bed. It was brought there this morning.

    Mrs. Bertram brought it herself. A large and benevolent soul, this Mrs. Bertram; a woman who talked a great deal more than was necessary and who read the newspapers rather more than was good for her. Mrs. Bertram thrived on news. Each morning, before she began her round of duties in the house, she consumed the more important portions of three of the morning dailies. And then to each of her four lodgers she passed on those portions, amended and exaggerated as she thought fit, as a kind of free gift with their breakfast trays. On Christmas Day and Easter Monday and other paperless occasions Mrs. Bertram pined in agony from the lack of news. Breakfast served neat, without a spot of morning scandal, seemed a futile affair altogether.

    She laid Jim’s tray down on the table beside his bed, crossed to the window and pulled back the curtains. The sunlight had more effect on Mr. Henderson than the alarm clock, for he sat up in bed, propped himself on one elbow, and blinked first at his breakfast and then at Mrs. Bertram.

    ’Morning, Mr. Henderson, said Mrs. Bertram. Lovely morning. Sun and everything. Regular summer’s day, it is.

    Mr. Henderson grunted.

    There’s your breakfast, dearie. Kippers again, I’m afraid. Price of eggs is something shocking. It’s this here government with their tariffs and their duties and their whatnots.

    Mr. Henderson thought for a moment of asking for further particulars of a government’s whatnots. Instead of doing which he grunted again.

    And there’s the morning paper for you. Nothing much in it. Some sort of a how-d’you-do in Borneo, and a typist in Manchester got strangled coming home from a dance. That conference has bust up without doing nothing, as usual. And Lady Carter—her that was the actress—has had another baby. Five, that is. And that horse you gave me for the three o’clock yesterday was last by a quarter of a furlong.

    Mr. Henderson (give the man his due) roused himself at this last piece of news. He said: That’s a pity, Mrs. Bertram.

    It’s more than a pity, Mr. Henderson. Thank heaven I don’t know how long a furlong is—that’s some consolation.

    Any letters, Mrs. Bertram?

    Three. On top of your kippers, dearie.

    Thanks.

    And Mrs. Bertram steered her large frame across the room and closed the door behind her. She scuttled back to the armchair at the side of the kitchen fireplace, found her spectacles, and continued the Daily Standard’s unnecessarily full details (with photograph on back page and cross marking the spot) of the Manchester strangle. She had not had time to digest the thing fully before the bells started ringing for their shaving-water. Done in with a length of picture cord, she was, poor girl. And such a nice-looking girl, too. Really nowadays you never could tell.

    In his bedroom Jim Henderson poured out coffee and began an attack on his kippers in a depressed silence. Usually at this time of the day he indulged in a fit of the blues. He reviewed the situation as he had done a hundred times before. Out of work. Been so for three years. And with every possibility of remaining so for the rest of his days. He had left school to join in the war, during which his mother had died. Had returned from the war with each limb intact but with neither business training nor experience. And since then things had not stopped going wrong. Letters, crisp and typewritten (we regret very much that we are unable to accept your application for this post, but we have been forced to fill the vacancy with a rather more experienced man) became as frequent as rejection slips to the budding author. He got a job, and very promptly lost it through telling the managing director, with a commendable but very rash frankness, exactly what he thought of him. And after that jobs were even harder to get. So, said Jim Henderson, picking the last vestiges of edible matter from his second kipper, so here we are. Pleasant and extremely good-looking young man, aged thirty-four, possessing no talents or accomplishments beyond being able to give an imitation of Gracie Fields giving an imitation of Galli-Curci, with no relations and practically no money, seeks job. He told himself that the subject of the sentence was much too far away from the verb to make the thing at all pleasant to the ear, and then proceeded to open his morning’s mail.

    Mrs. Bertram had been perfectly right when she said that there were three letters. She might, of course, have added that two of the three bore only halfpenny stamps, thus considerably reducing their interest. But the third was a real, live, honest affair with the full three-halfpenceworth of stampage in its top right-hand corner. Jim inspected it thoroughly. Felt it. Smelt it. Decided that he didn’t know the handwriting, and that he had never heard of the postmark. And then laid it down beside the remains of his kippers. Best to keep a thing like that to the last; much more satisfactory to deal with the riff-raff first. He dealt with the riff-raff. In the very remote chance of being able to get odds against one of the two halfpenny letters being a bill, Jim would have made money. A bill it certainly was. From Messrs. Smith, Hopkinson and Trevor, Ltd. To account rendered, one lounge suit, £8 8s. od. Jim swore, under his breath at first and then audibly. The other was an appeal from the old boys’ association of the public school at which he had learned the finer points of rugby football. Mr. James Lockhart, M.A., was resigning his post of Senior Science Master at the end of the summer term, and it was felt that all old boys should be given the opportunity of subscribing to some small token of their appreciation of Mr. Lockhart’s long and valued services. Jim swore, audibly at first and then under his breath, and remembered the classic occasion when he had lathered the seat of old Lockjaw’s desk with soft soap. He passed on to the third letter.

    He read it slowly, took a sip of his coffee, and read it again. He laid it down for a moment beside his coffee-cup and lay back to contemplate his bedroom ceiling. The ceiling was in need of dusting and whitewashing, and the soot from the gas-jet had made a dark circle in one corner. But for once Jim did not notice these things. He poured himself out a further supply of coffee while reading the letter for the third time, and sent most of the coffee into his saucer and very little into the cup. The amazing thing was that the letter read exactly the same each time. He read:

    Thrackley,

    nr. Adderly, Surrey.

    21st.

    Dear Captain Henderson,

    I am not quite sure whether you will know me. I was a very close friend of your father and lived with him in South Africa for many years before he died. I met you once or twice in England when you were very young. I have recently returned to England from abroad and have taken this house in Surrey for a while. I wonder if you would care to come down next weekend and join in a little unofficial house-warming?

    I can promise you excellent fishing and fair shooting, and the company will be nearer your age than mine, so you need not worry on that account. There is an extremely bad train which leaves St. Pancras at 3.20, getting to Adderly at a quarter-past four. May I expect you down next Friday? I can send the car to meet you at Adderly station, if you will let me know when you are coming. I hope that I may have the pleasure of seeing you again.

    Yours very sincerely,

    Edwin Carson.

    Well, said Jim. Never heard of the fellow in my life. He pushed the bedclothes back, threw his legs over the side of the bed, and stretched himself. Then he crossed to his dressing-table and looked at his reflection in the mirror. He mentioned casually to the reflection that it would have been much better if he had been very fair instead of very dark, passed his hand over the offending scrubbiness of his chin, and said What about it?

    What about what? said the reflection.

    This Thrackley business, of course.

    Oh, that, said the reflection. Accept it, you fool. You’ll probably be bored stiff, but it’s a free weekend with free food and free drink. You might even be able to get twelve-and-six knocked off Mother Bertram’s monthly bill for board, lodgings, and services. So why not?

    Very well, said Jim Henderson. Very well, Mr. Carson, whoever you are, we shall be pleased to accept your kind invitation for Friday next. Now where in the name of heaven is my shaving water?

    II

    An annual subscription to Graham’s was one of the few luxuries which Jim Henderson permitted himself. It was, he felt, money well spent. Most people know Graham’s. You enter it from the Strand, and its interior makes up for all that the exterior lacks. At Graham’s you may obtain a cocktail which is really much the same as the best cocktail in any of the other London clubs, but which has just an extra something which makes it far superior and leaves the others lagging miserably behind. At Graham’s, too, you can get a very fine omelette aux champignons, so light and airy that you have to be ready to bolt it the very minute it arrives on its heated pewter dish; if you are not, the wretched thing falls flat like a burst balloon and sags despondently all over your plate. At Graham’s—well, in any case, Graham’s is certainly worth its fifteen guineas a year membership fee. No matter how hard it is for you to scrape together the said fifteen.

    When Jim entered the club shortly after eleven that morning he found the usual before-lunch crowd in their usual places in the lounge. Derek Simpson astride an armchair, his long legs swinging over the leather arms, his group of satellites listening to Derek Simpson’s opinions of Derek Simpson’s acting in the new thing at the Alhambra. John Fletcher and old Angus and some of the more elderly members in their corner, drinking Bacardis and bemoaning the new level to which rubber had fallen. Someone whom Jim remembered as having played for Oxford at something (squash, he imagined) relating, with a wealth of detail, his experiences of a recent Channel crossing. A large gentleman in plus fours practising chip shots on the lounge carpet, with the screwed-up front page of The Times as a ball and an empty beer tankard as the hole. And in the cocktail bar through the swing doors the Honourable Freddie Usher was laughing.

    No other person in the world laughed quite like Freddie Usher. Mercifully so. Large and oily film-directors, ever ready to jar their talking-picture audiences with a new and devastating noise, offered the most amazing terms for the inclusion of half-a-minute of Freddie Usher’s laugh in their latest productions. There were no half-hearted methods adopted when Freddie Usher became amused. No discreetness. No lack of abandon. No thought for the ear-drums of those in the next street but two. No… Freddie Usher threw back his chest, opened his mouth to a distressing width, slapped his thighs and all thighs within reach, and announced his amusement to the world.

    Jim pushed open the heavy swing doors which led from the lounge to the bar. He stood at the doors for a moment, realizing that conversation was out of the question until the Honourable Freddie had recovered from his mirth.

    ’Morning, everybody, he said at last. ’Morning, Freddie.

    James! said Freddie, cutting short the last diminuendoes of the cackle. Dear old James! What is it?

    Gin-and-ginger, please, Freddie.

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